= A Serial Introduction Part 1 =Winners of ITU-AJ Encouragement Awards 2023
In May every year, The ITU Association of Japan (ITU-AJ) proudly presents ITU-AJ Encouragement Awards to people who have madeoutstanding contributions in the field of international standardization and have helped in the ongoing development of ICT.
These Awards are also an embodiment of our sincere desire to encourage further contributions from these individuals in the future.
If you happen to run into these winners at another meeting in the future, please say hello to them.
But first, as part of the introductory series of Award Winners, allow us to introduce some of those remarkable winners.

Kei Ando

NTT DOCOMO, INC.
https://www.docomo.ne.jp/english/
Fields of activity: 3
 GPP RAN, O-RAN

Contributions to 3GPP RAN and O-RAN Alliance standardization
I am ver y honored to have received this prestigious
encouragement award from the ITU Association of Japan. I would
like to express my sincere gratitude to all at ITU-AJ and everyone else
involved.
After I joined NTT DOCOMO in 2011 I worked for about
six and a half years on development of commercial mobile phonedevices and 3GPP standardization. At 3GPP, I was involved fromupdating LTE-Advanced to introducing the first edition of 5GNR, standardizing frequency bands among other things. Theintense technical discussions with various Japanese and international
companies to achieve better communication quality and global
harmonization of frequency bands left a strong impression on me.
Currently, I am working in the RAN Plenary to set NTT
DOCOMO’s standardization policy, mainly on frequency bands

Hidenori Iwashita

and RF topics. Since July 2022, I also participated in the O-RAN
Alliance, in planning of use cases using Open RAN solutions andin administration activities for releases. In work with the O-RAN
Alliance I am facing areas that are new to me, such as open interfaces,
intelligent functions and virtualization technology, so I am working
proactively and studying every day.
In the future at 3GPP, we expect to study the possibilities for
6G, with Release 20 in about 2025. As in the past with 3G, 4G and
5G, NTT DOCOMO will lead discussions on 6G standardization,
creating value for customers in the 2030s and contributing to 6G
implementation. As part of that effort, I will use the experience I havegained in standardization, from LTE-Advanced through to 5G NR,
and work to contribute even a small amount to 6G standardization
with 3GPP and the O-RAN Alliance.

NTT Space Environment and Energy Laboratories
https://group.ntt/en/
Fields of activity: ITU-T SG5

Standardization of soft-error countermeasures in telecommunicationequipment
I would like to offer sincere thanks for receiving this prestigious
ITU Association of Japan Encouragement Award. I would also like tothank the members of the TTC Soft-error Ad-hoc Committee.
Telecommunication service interruptions thought to be caused bysoft errors due to cosmic-ray-induced neutrons (over-writing memorybits) and countermeasures have long been a difficult issue to solve(particularly increasing recently) for development and maintenanceof communications equipment. To elucidate this phenomenon, in2012 I established testing technology that uses an accelerator tocause neutron emissions, which then can reproduce soft errors incommunications devices. This enables the effects of soft errors to beunderstood before they occur, so that improvements can be madeto equipment and introduced into operating networks to greatly
improve communication quality. To standardize this technology
internationally, I proposed new work items for recommendations
regarding soft errors, and in 2015, established discussion toward

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creating a recommendation. In 2016, a new recommendation, K.124,
was established describing this set of recommendations in outline, andstarting in 2017, I acted as associate rapporteur for ITU-T SG5 WP1
Q5, to draft the set of recommendations and hold discussions withtelecommunications carriers and vendors in Japan and internationally.
In 2018, the new recommendations were created: K.130 (Testing),K.131 (Design), K.138 (Criteria) and K.139 (Evaluation). In 2020, I
contributed to creating K.150, which summarizes device information
required to apply soft error mitigation measures. Currently,
communications equipment conforming to these standards, withmeasures to mitigate soft errors, is being installed in real, operating
networks. I am extremely pleased to see technology that I worked
on as an international standard. In the future, I hope to continue
to contribute to improving the reliability of telecommunications
networks.

Chihiro Kito

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation
https://group.ntt/en/
Fields of activity: ITU-T SG15 WP2, SG15 Q7 RapporteurStandardization activities for maintaining stable, high-quality
communications infrastructure
I would like to offer sincere thanks for this ITU Association ofJapan Encouragement Award at this time. I am very grateful to all
who provided their support for these standardization activities.
In ITU-T SG15 WP2 Q7, which handles discussion related
to maintenance and connectivity of outdoor optical physicalinfrastructure, I proposed a system for a set of maintenance andoperation Recommendations for ITU-T, and contributed toorganizing maintenance and operation Recommendations by creating
new general provisions in L.330 and driving the work as editor forvarious Recommendations. Until recently operators in each country
implemented their own schemes for maintenance and operations,and ITU-T Recommendations related to maintenance were meager.
However, with the spread of optical communications, the number ofoutdoor facilities requiring maintenance by operators has increased
dramatically. Thus, creating a standard scheme for managing thequality and reliability of large numbers of outdoor optical facilities

Akihiko Satoabove a certain standard and operating it continuously, in the form ofan open ITU Recommendation, is essential to ensure the soundnessof optical telecommunications networks globally. I recognize it as aduty of Japan, as a leading country in the spread of FTTH.
Optical communications has permeated life as important
infrastructure, and social demand for maintaining high quality,
stable communications infrastructure will increase greatly in thefuture. Japan has issues with maintenance of infrastructure, such asa shrinking workforce and degradation of buildings from the periodof rapid economic growth, but there are also many maintenance andoperation techniques being proposed using excellent new technologies
such as image recognition, drones and optical f iber sensing
technologies. I will continue working to promote standardization
efforts in this area while following technology trends that can realize
improved efficiency and labor saving in operations and maintenance,
and to promote technical results from Japan.

Advanced Transmission Systems Research Division / Science and Technologies
Research Laboratories / Japan Broadcasting Corporation
https://www.nhk.or.jp/strl/english/
Fields of activity: Digital Terrestrial Television Broadcasting

Activities on International Standardization for New Digital Terrestrial
Broadcasting Systems
Thank you so much for the honor of receiving this ITU
Association of Japan Encouragement Award. I would like to take thisopportunity to express my gratitude to ITU-AJ and the many otherpeople involved, for their guidance and cooperation.
2nd-generation digital terrestrial television broadcasting (DTTB)
systems, which utilize the latest video coding and transmission
technologies and improve bandwidth eff iciency, are being
implemented globally, and R&D and trials on the next generation
DTTB system is in progress in Japan.
When transitioning to new services using the 2nd-generation
DTTB system, new and current systems had to be broadcast
simultaneously until receivers supporting the 2nd-generation
system had been widely adopted. When there are not enough vacantchannels for new services, creating channels can be a major burden
for broadcasters. In Japan, research with the goal of introducing
new services in the same channel used for existing services began

in 2019, and I also was involved in that research activity. WhenI started participating in ITU-R SG6 meetings, work on a newrecommendation was also in progress, on guidance for introducing
new services to help countries considering transition to the newsystem. I contributed to creating the new recommendation by adding
concrete technical methods to introduce new services. Currently, I amcontributing to ITU-R SG6 meetings by inputting results of research
being done in Japan on the next-generation DTTB system to themeetings and reflecting them in reports and recommendations.
Demand for broadcasting continues to expand. Broadcasting isan efficient means for distribution of video content, and is important
infrastructure supporting public safety. I will take this award as
encouragement and continue my effort to contribute to international
standardization activities and to the advancement and growth ofbroadcasting.

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